How mice give birth to mountains - the impact of constituency service on planning policy and urban sprawl

It happens regularly that the Flemish government approves legislation that undermines its own ambitious strategic planning policy vision. Through constituency service - an informal approach of politicians to help individual citizens - building project needs of individual land owners seem to scale up to generic changes in the Flemish planning legislation. This project aims to expose this underlying process through in-depth interviews with decisive actors, starting from two recent disruptive changes in planning legislation, and a survey among all Flemish parliament members. A comparison with North Brabant (NL) and Hauts-de-France (F) will determine if political service and its spatial impact is unique for Flanders.